Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province held a meeting to create an advanced transportation culture. Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province (Governor Kim Jin-tae) and the Gangwon Headquarters of the Korea Transportation Safety Authority held a ‘Visiting Gangwon Provincial Government’ meeting to promote traffic safety with officials attending at the Gangwon Headquarters of the Korea Transportation Safety Authority on Thursday, January 9.
This meeting was held to start the new year with residents in the field and establish policies that prioritize the safety of people’s livelihoods.
At the meeting, time was spent establishing a close cooperation system between Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province and the Gangwon Headquarters of the Korea Transportation Safety Authority in the field of traffic safety and discussing sector-specific plans to prevent and reduce traffic accidents.
Park Wan-gil, head of the Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province’s Transportation Department, said, “Traffic safety work is an important field closely related to the safety and life protection of residents,” and asked, “Please work hard to establish an advanced transportation culture in Gangwon by supporting the continuous and active transportation safety culture movement.” .
Meanwhile, Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province (Governor Kim Jin-tae) invested a total budget of 9.8 billion won, including additional disaster preparedness funds (4.2 billion won) and city and county budgets (1.4 billion won), to prevent the spread of pine wilt disease damage this year by removing damaged dead trees and planting preventive trees. It was announced that control work such as injections and tree species conversion will be carried out.
As a result of conducting a surveillance on dead trees affected by wilt disease from May 2024 to the end of December 2024 across the province, a total of 29,859 trees subject to pest control (13,344 infected trees, 16,515 other dead trees) were surveyed, and about 9,000 trees were killed in the second half of 2024. Pest control has been completed. In addition, we plan to completely remove the remaining 21,000 trees and additional trees subject to pest control by the end of April this year, and also carry out preventive tree injections for pine trees, focusing on areas around infected trees and at the tip, and in areas with high risk of wilt disease. We plan to strengthen triple (helicopter-drone-ground) surveillance in areas suspected of being infected and prevent pest control targets from being missed.
In addition, we plan to actively promote tree species conversion control in areas where pine wilt disease occurs repeatedly or in groups, focusing on major cities and counties where pine wilt disease occurs, such as Chuncheon, Wonju, and Hongcheon.
Tree species conversion control is a method of felling all pine trees in an area where damaged dead trees occur in groups, performing shredding or fumigation, and planting tree species other than pine trees through a stand sale contract between the forest owner and the log producer. After the tree species conversion control is implemented, a portion of the profits from the disposal of products treated with control treatments such as shredding or fumigation are returned to the forest owner, and the out-of-pocket cost of restoration reforestation due to logging is exempted.
Yoon Seung-gi, Director of the Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province Forestry and Environment Bureau, said, “As of the end of December 24, the number of trees infected with wiltworm disease in Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province was 13,344 trees, which is 1.3% of the nationwide total, which is a minor level, but we will do our best to respond quickly and thoroughly control the disease to prevent the damage from spreading.” It was revealed that tree species conversion control is the best control method that can control wilt disease and return profits to farmers. We requested a lot of interest and active participation from mountain owners.
Economy Queen Reporter Choi Hana
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